Ashani Creighton: Is body of missing Orange County girl in Tulsa?

Authorities in Oklahoma will continue searching this morning for the body of a girl who went missing in Central Florida more than a decade ago.

On Sunday, Det. Marcus Robinson of the Orange County Sheriff's Office said the search for Ashani Creighton had moved inside a small strip center, under which investigators had discovered a "place of interest" — an underground anomaly that, based on its size, deserved further scrutiny.

Searchers broke through the building's concrete foundation, and anthropologists were on the scene sifting through the underlying soil, Robinson said.

Tulsa police, the local district attorney and medical examiner were on hand, as well.

When reached by telephone Sunday night, Robinson said searchers had finished investigating a part of the strip center where a bread store is located. They found no evidence of Ashani, he said. But searchers from various law enforcement and volunteer agencies continued to investigate several other areas of the strip center until about 10:30 p.m. Sunday.

"We are still actively utilizing ground penetrating radar," Robinson said Sunday night. "We have located some additional spots."

He added: "We are currently conducting extensive searches in a tae kwon do studio and continuing to scan in a temporary employment business and also a sandwich shop."

They will start their work again at about 8 a.m. today.

On Saturday, police, forensic experts and archaeologists began using ground-penetrating radar to search under the strip center's parking lot for Ashani's body.

In a statement Saturday, Tulsa police Deputy Chief of Investigations Dennis Larsen said authorities suspect the girl, who was reported missing in Orange County in 2000, was buried on the site before the lot's surface was poured.

Orange County authorities have said Ashani was sent to Orlando by her mother in 1997 to live with her grandparents, Kaia and Ernest Jackson, who were fugitives in a New Jersey child-abuse case.

Orange County Sheriff's Office investigators have long suspected that Ashani is dead. They now believe, Larsen said, that she was murdered in Florida in 1999, then buried in Tulsa.

Authorities have said they suspect Ashani was 5 or 6 when she died.

In 1999, the area that is now a strip center and parking lot was occupied by a house, Robinson said. That house, however, was not owned by or linked to Ashani's grandparents.

Robinson characterized it as "a random location."

Ashani's grandparents were arrested in 2000 in Oklahoma after a 12-year manhunt, during which authorities tracked them through several states.

The Jacksons had skipped bail in a child-abuse case in New Jersey in 1988, authorities said. In that case, the couple's 8-year-old son had fled their Teaneck, N.J., home and wandered into a restaurant, disoriented and bearing burns and other injuries.

For more than a decade, the wanted couple and the children in their care lived under assumed names, investigators said. The children were home-schooled to avoid detection.

Upon the Jacksons' 2000 arrest, Oklahoma authorities took four children into custody, but there was no sign of Ashani. The grandparents refused to be questioned.

It's not clear what specifically led to the search. It's been some time since any developments in the girl's disappearance were reported.

Robinson said Ashani's grandmother currently is incarcerated in Oklahoma.

He said investigators have "credible information" indicating the girl is buried at the site. But he would not say from where the information came.

In an unusual turn, a Florida Panhandle prisoner in 2006 penned a pair of letters claiming he and another man had kidnapped and murdered the girl in Florida in 1997. The letters came with a crudely drawn map, with an X drawn on a small island in Orlando's Barnett Park.

It's unclear if anything came of his claims, as police said they had strong doubts that his version of events was accurate. His claims didn't match their investigation.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children arranged for cadaver dogs as well as a ground penetrating radar to search beneath the pavement, Tulsa police said.